I have noticed that a some companies are taking advantage to the assumed meaning of 'sustainable'.
A company can market itself as 'sustainable' through its ability to maintain its current operation indefinitely. This does not mean that they are ecologically sustainable by any means.
For instance; organisations here in Australia that deal in greenfield housing developments claim to be 'sustainable' even though they promote the ramped expansion of automobile-dependent sub-urban sprawl over quality farmland and/or native forests.
I think this stems from the lack of regulation on how the term 'sustainable' is used, or mis-used.
Sustainability needs to be more accurately defined and its misrepresentation needs to be limited and punished where necessary.
Do you folks know of any examples of this?
Totally agree with you. In-fact I know we have laws that state that in terms of food, if it says lite or light butter it has to meet a certain percentage to go with it.
I do not know if there is a general law about it though in regards to any word . Just having the "sustainability" as a lone word means its sustainable regardless to the environment so no laws are broken. Its that way with organic industry as well "organic" means no chemicals after the large companies got done lobbying it, to leave out the "diversity of crop" part and raising the fee each year for the licence to 1000$ small farms can't pay it and stay afloat..
As long as the Companies continue to own the government and pay enough money to political pork barrel projects it won't change. Unless the people of the world unite together and speak out as one for every voice the politicians say it represents 20 like minded people. At least in the USA.
Certain industries will never be environmentally friendly no mater how much they try to make their image over like all the online massive multi player games its pure entertainment that uses huge amounts of energy it is never going to be environmentally sustainable. Ferrari Car company is pure entertainment and will never be environmentally friendly. Its not necessity. Yes you need some entertainment but that is what the card games, tag, hide and seek, folk music without all the electronic gizmo's are for. Minimal resources goes into this list. We need to establish which companies will never be environmentally sustainable that we can live without and shut them down. Yes people will loos there jobs those people can find work elsewhere or go into farming to reduce the need for oil intensive farming, like mono farming.
We can talk till we are blue in the face, The real impact of change is when we take action based on information we have talked about. So lets do more action to create change. :)
I don’t think it matter what you do with the definition, companies will you it to make more money what ever you do (its not what they do that counts but what they are perceived to do in many people’s minds).
Basically, this whole socioeconomic system has a unsustainable nature to it so its not defining the word we need but thinking about a new socioeconomic system.
The only future we have is the one we make!
Building a new sustainable society for a post carbon world
Technocracy
Your right the current social economics is unsustainable. Its greed that drives it you have to remove the greed in order to fix it. Need to take control away from the current money holders but only way to do it is to go to war with them. They will not give up their power grip they currently have.
We can talk till we are blue in the face, The real impact of change is when we take action based on information we have talked about. So lets do more action to create change. :)
I don’t think you can remove greed as it does form one of the normal attributes of humans. Our current socioeconomic system encourages greed and selfishness so we see it as a dominate characteristic. Fortunately humans have other characteristics as well. If we change the system we can bring those other characteristics to the fore and reduce the impact of greed.
One way I see we can do that would involve developing a new system based around cooperation and does not involve money nor private ownership.
:)
The only future we have is the one we make!
Building a new sustainable society for a post carbon world
Technocracy
I think it's a realy problem when coming to ecological sustainability especially in developing countries that I'm from. With you raise that point those in power will start to tell u that people need jobs and those companies contribute a lot to the economy of the country because they pay a lot of tax. They don't mind about what is going to happen in some years to come, and they don't care about the next generations.
In some cases the community will complain about those companies, the said company will be charged a certain amount of money. And the charged amount is less than 10% of the money they make every day. Or the company will pay a certain amount to those in power and the case wii just die. Greed is the problem.
lesotho;1457 wrote:Greed is the problem.
And so works the Price $ystem!
I don’t think it will change unless we can demonstrate a viable alternative.
:)
The only future we have is the one we make!
Building a new sustainable society for a post carbon world
Technocracy
Where and how could we set up a small demonstration alliterative without breaking any laws? There is the tax laws for starters. Then there is what will we uses as trade in place of money. Then there is the need to get so many people doing it in order to create a working feedback loop.
The leadership and big business have spent many years making laws that would prevent this kind of thing from happening, in order to keep us law abiders under there thumb.
How are we going to break out without going to court for 10+ years when it will be too late to implement?
We can talk till we are blue in the face, The real impact of change is when we take action based on information we have talked about. So lets do more action to create change. :)
I suppose that might depend on where you live but its not a problem where I am. To start with, due to size, we would need to work with in the system a great deal. Forming cooperative companies I think is the way to do that. Then build a community. You run the inside of the community as a moneyless system and the outside as a cooperative company. Then you add more communities. The more you do internally the less dependency you have on the rest of the world.
:)
The only future we have is the one we make!
Building a new sustainable society for a post carbon world
Technocracy
Frosty Wooldridge -- Decline of Industrial Civilization
The Decline of Industrial Civilization
Should be of interest.
I think it's a realy problem when coming to ecological sustainability especially in developing countries that I'm from. With you raise that point those in power will start to tell u that people need jobs and those companies contribute a lot to the economy of the country because they pay a lot of tax. They don't mind about what is going to happen in some years to come, and they don't care about the next generations.
In some cases the community will complain about those companies, the said company will be charged a certain amount of money. And the charged amount is less than 10% of the money they make every day. Or the company will pay a certain amount to those in power and the case wii just die. Greed is the problem.